ON SS. HELIODORUS AND DOSAS, MARTYRS.
Perhaps under Constantine Copronymus.
Their memory in the Greek Calendars; the time of the martyrdom.
Heliodorus, martyr (St.)
Dosas, martyr (St.)
J. P.
Various Calendars of the Greeks mark these Saints on this present day. For the great Menaea published in print write these things: On the same day, the memory of the holy martyr Heliodorus and of Dosas. Their cultus from the Calendars There are added the Menaeum of Chifflet, the Menology of Sirleto, and our Sirmond-Chifflet transcripts; which last follow them with a eulogy. Behold for thee the Greek text of the same, here rendered into Latin: Πεντηκοστῷ τρίτῳ ·· τοῦ βασιλέως ἄπελθόντος μετὰ στρατοῦ οὐκ ὀλίγου ἐν τῷ Ῥωμαἳκῷ κάστρῳ, ἐφ᾽ ᾧ τάστε ἐκκλησίας καθαιρεῖν, τάστε ἱερὰς εἰκόνας ἀνατρέπειν, καὶ τὰ λείψανα τῶν Ἁγίων πυρὶ κατακαίειν, οἱ ἅγιοι Ἡλιόδωρος καὶ Δὸσᾶς παῤῥησιάμενοι, καὶ τὸν τοῦ τυράννου διελέγξαντες ἀθεότητα, καὶ τὴν ἀληθῆ πίστιν ἀνακηρύξαντες ἐν βαρυτάτῳ γήρᾳ· ἦν γὰρ ὁ Ἡλιόδωρος ἐτῶν γέ, πολλὰς καὶ πολυτρόπους βασάνων ἰδέας ὑπέμειναν, καὶ τελευταῖον τὰς ῥῖνας τμηθέντες, καὶ τὰς κεφαλὰς καταφλεχθέντες, εὐχαριστοῦντες καὶ προσευχόμενοι, παρέδωκαν τῷ Κυρίῳ τὰ πνεύματα. In the fifty-third … after the emperor had gone with a small army to the Roman fortress, to destroy churches, and to overthrow the sacred images, and to burn with fire the relics of the Saints, SS. Heliodorus and Dosas, using free speech and refuting the impiety of the tyrant and announcing the true faith in the most bowed-down old age (for Heliodorus was in his ninety-fifth year), endured many and various kinds of torments, and at last, their noses being cut off and their heads burned, giving thanks and praying, delivered their spirits to the Lord. Castellan also marks both these Martyrs in his Universal Martyrology.
[2] You see that at the beginning of this narrative there is a lacuna. Why we suspect that that martyrdom happened under Constantine Copronymus. What year therefore ought here to be understood is hidden from me. But concerning the emperor, although no certain light shines forth, nevertheless the overthrow of the images, of which mention is there made, seems to hint that the event took place in the time of the Iconoclasts; and because besides the writer mentions the destruction of churches and the burning of the relics of the Saints, the suspicion has fallen on me that perhaps Constantine Copronymus is here tacitly designated, to whom the said marks of impiety would fit. For Theophanes in his Chronography, page 370 of the royal Parisian edition of the year 1655, thus painting that emperor to our purpose, says: He himself dug the relics of the Saints out of their sacred coffers, and utterly abolished them, that they might nowhere any more exist. Against those therefore who venerated them, as against impious persons, he threatened proscriptions of goods, exiles, and punishments. Wherever relics chiefly winning God's favor … were kept, he took them out of the way as quickly as possible, that henceforth they should not be seen. Something of this kind the irreligious emperor practiced against the most precious body of the most celebrated martyr Euphemia, when indeed he sank it with its very coffer into the depth of the sea … This common enemy of the churches, having profaned the sacred building of the same martyr, had made it an armory, and had wickedly devoted it to the receiving of dung. Whence it is concluded that to that nefarious enemy of the sacred images there belong also the two other marks of impiety of which I spoke, namely the profanation of temples and of holy relics: whence it came about that I set down above that the martyrdom of our two Champions perhaps occurred under that same Constantine Copronymus, although it could also have occurred under another iconoclast emperor.